Meet the candidate: John Hamilton

The Chronicle invited John Hamilton, who is running for a seat on the Hamilton Board of Selectmen, to submit a candidate statement.

Candidate statement: Submitted by John HamiltonLee ParkHamilton

Candidate for the Hamilton Board of Selectmen

I have been involved in Hamilton town service for more than 10 years now and I have had several duties. I joined the Conservation Commission 10 years ago and for six years have served both as chairperson and co-chairperson. I have been assistant chairman of the Road Safety Committee for nine years. I am a member of the recently formed Miles River Collaborative in which officials from four communities are working together to solve the problems of the Miles River. I have been chairman of the Miles River Task Force, also a four community agency, since it was founded with the assistance of our legislative delegation in 2001. I have been actively involved for many years in seeking solutions to Hamilton’s groundwater / drinking water / flooding problems, problems that are sure to increase as a consequence of global warming. I'm a member of the Board of the Friends of the Hamilton Wenham Public Library. I have served on a number of other ad hoc committees. Currently I am a member of the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission Metro Future Implementation Task Force. In that position I have worked with persons from all over eastern Massachusetts trying to implement smart growth objectives.

I offer here my vision for our town and my suggestion as to what we must do to achieve that vision.

In the future I want Hamilton to be a town which maintains its current rural character. Adding to that character I hope to see our wonderful rural areas more and more assessable to the public by foot, horse and bicycle. In gradual steps this has been accomplished for decades now and I believe that with careful stewardship we can continue that process. I want Hamilton to be a town for families. Families of all varieties. Families of differing income levels and families with different community needs. I want Hamilton to be a town where retired persons can live affordably in the homes where they have raised their children and a town where their children can find affordable places to live. I want Hamilton to be a town that is able to support education at the level of excellence we enjoyed not too many years ago and a town that can accomplish that in a way that is affordable to residential property owners

The naysayers tell us that my vision is impossible. They tell us that we must gouge our land and desecrate our neighborhoods in order to bring in a stream of income that promises only to slow down the rate of increase in our mushrooming fiscal pain. Some persons in our town are threatened with losing their homes because they cannot pay real estate taxes. Careful analysis of the numbers of the proposed plan shows that it will not help these people at all.

My solution to achieving my vision is possible. It involves making changes. First, let's get rid of special interest in our economic development planning. Our town needs a commercial tax base and it will be a lot easier and more productive to develop one than townspeople have been told. The landfill site is one obvious source for commercial development. Our downtown area is another. The downtown area has been neglected for decades. Its level of land use efficiency is very poor. The history of development of services for downtown is a simple one: such development has been nonexistent. Other towns in our part of Massachusetts have revived business districts from non-performing to vibrant productive commercial areas providing substantial tax revenue. We can do the same.

Secondly, let's get rid of the 40B monster. Unless and until we convince the Department of Housing and Community Development that we are doing something about our affordable housing problem we are at risk. That risk is that outside developers, subject to very little regulation by our town at all, can develop high density residential projects almost at will. The numbers are simple. For our town to get to the 10% requirement private 40B developers would be allowed to build in excess of 1400 homes. A quarter of those would be assessed at under $200,000 and in all probability nearly all of them would be homes for school-age children. It is possible to deal with our affordable housing crisis and many communities have. We need a plan. We have been told such a plan is impossible and we ought not to bother. I'm willing to work for a solution to our affordable housing crisis. The continued existence of our town as we know it depends upon it.

Finally, let's stop using smart growth as a deceptive buzzword to hide the same old failed ideas and make real smart growth our goal. The Commonwealth has given us a tremendous number of tools to work with. Our town has ignored them. Using those tools we would preserve our open space, realize the terrific potential of our downtown area, provide a highly profitable development at the landfill and provide a quality of life even superior to that we have enjoyed for decades including outstanding education for our children while reducing our residential tax burden.

I ask the voters of Hamilton to give me the opportunity to demonstrate that my ideas and energy can result in achieving the vision for our town that I know they share with me.